


Backbreakers

by WT Maxwell (WThomas_M)



Category: G.I. Joe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, knowing is half the battle, that's why they use lasers, the other half is shooting the bad guy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2020-05-18 19:44:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19341340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WThomas_M/pseuds/WT%20Maxwell
Summary: During one particularly hot Georgia summer day, Ms. O'Hara and her girlfriend Ms. Hart are celebrating O'Hara passing the bar exams when things don't go as planned.Light zombie-esque antics ensue and at least one hero is born.





	Backbreakers

The pain was excruciating.

The woman woke up in her house, but it was a disaster. Large holes everywhere, fire; were those bullet holes in her wall? And why was a soldier squatting over her, holding her head?

“There. That’s the worst of it. What’s your name?”

“I… I can’t remember. Why?”

The soldier smiled. “Don’t worry. It’ll come back. How are you feeling?”

“Bruised all over.” She tested herself and panicked. “I can’t move my legs.”

“That’s okay. That’s normal. They’re usually the last thing to come back.”

With help, she pulled herself into a sitting position against a wall and looked over at the man who helped her. ‘C. Abernathy’ was on a patch on his chest, sergeant stripes on his arm. “‘C’ stands for?”

“You’re welcome to call me ‘Hawk’.”

"Seriously?"

"Sounds _much_ cooler than 'Clayton'."

The woman faintly managed a look of gratitude. “Hi, Hawk. What are you doing in my house? And why is my house a wreck?”

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“I was outside, getting the ribs ready for grilling. I passed the bar exam. We were supposed to be celebrating. She brought cider." The woman tried for a bigger smile but it just hurt. "There was this buzzing sound, like a big beetle or a carpenter bee and I saw Allie just keel over. Then something smacked me in the back…” The woman frowned. “That’s it.” She straightened up. “Allie… is she okay? Jesus... was she shot?”

Hawk frowned. “It wasn't like that. Not a sniper shot. I don’t know if she's okay, but I’ll try and find out. I promise.”

The woman tried to reach out, managed to grab Hawk by the shirt to steady herself. “Please… tell me what’s going on.”

Hawk help up a hand to silence her and, when she let him go, he moved from a crouch to a careful stance, scanning the area. He let out a frustrated sigh and returned to her side. “It looks like the neighborhood’s still on lockdown, so there’s some time." He sighed. "You were co-opted.”

“Co-opted by what? Into what?”

Hawk sat down. “Folks haven’t heard about it yet, but we figure they will soon enough. The next level in terrorism. Remote controlled assets.”

“That sounds… terrifying.” The woman shifted and noted that her legs were coming back awake. “But what does it mean?”

“That sound you heard earlier? That was a drone. Small one. About the size of a fist. It’s purpose is to target civilian assets—folks like you—and deliver what we’ve called the 'backbreaker’. It’s a nanite globe that exfiltrates the spine and seizes control of the subject. When activated, they spark, causing excruciating pain as they link to their host. That pain causes temporary retrograde amnesia, which means folks have a hard time figuring out when they got linked in or why.”

“So this is like mind control? That’s what happened to me?”

“Less mind control and more like turning you into a temporary, mindless puppet. The backbreakers hook up to a local network and then use an outside command trunk to connect to dark web ops centers where the terrorists remote-pilot your body. Troops, subversion, surprise assassinations. All of that’s possible.

“How do you even fight something like that?”

Hawk smiled. “Well, we’re not helpless. First, if we know it’s going on, we can sever remote communications and prevent them from controlling you at a distance. Second, if we’re able to deliver a focused, localized EMP, we can burn out the nanites inside you and bring the subject back basically unharmed.”

“Subjects like me.”

“Yup. People like you.”

“So, you cut off the internet and they stop working. Seems like a big flaw in the bad guy’s plan.”

“They’ve got a workaround. Automatic default mode, for example. Search and destroy. Cause mayhem. That kind of crap. And if they’ve planned this out in advance, they have supplies on-site. Get everyone dressed in tactical armor and geared up with weapons. Face shield prevents us from identifying which are strictly civilian and which are not.”

“And let me guess: the non-civilians have on-site control?”

“Bingo. So we’re left with the bug-zappers.” Hawk lifted up his weapon. What the woman thought initially was some sort of assault rifle was something more futuristic; a much heftier case with visible blue-charged energy where the magazine would be.

The woman brought herself to her feet. Hawk steadied her. “So… let me get this straight. My neighborhood’s been turned into a bunch of puppets, some of the folks outside are enemy puppeteers and you’re stuck here because there’s too many of them and not enough of you.”

“That sums it up. We were tasked to learn the origin of these backbreakers and take out the primary command structure but… well, honestly, no one ever expected it to be this bad and we’re kind of too spread out right now.”

The woman looked outside, saw her neighbors walking around, armed to the teeth with homemade weapons that ranged from kitchen knives to hunting rifles. “The dark web link is down?”

“Yeah. And not under immediate command, as far as I can tell, so those folks are basically on autopilot.”

“How they identify each other?”

“Well, there's no IFF, if that's what you're asking. Sorry... soldier-speak. What I mean is they don't have a way to tell who's a good guy and who's a bad guy with the link down. Best we can figure is that they upload the face when the person is hijacked, but once the network link is down they can't update it.”

“That’s… good.”

“It is?”

“Can I borrow that?”

Hawk gave her an incredulous look. “The bug zapper? Why?”

The woman gave another look out and, much to Hawk’s surprise, she smirked as she pulled her ginger hair back into a ponytail. “Could be that I started training with my dad and brothers since I was 9. Or that I've been working with M-14s, M-16s and the XK-1 since I was fifteen. Or, I could tell you I want to get my girlfriend back and I'd like to get those ribs on the barbecue before they spoil. Or that there are some neighbors who have been really nice to us that I'd like to rescue and some not-so-nice ones I wouldn’t mind shooting in the back.”

Hawk didn’t answer. His mouth was open in a bit of shock.

The woman turned back to Hawk. “But the full truth is my family’s been career military for about three generations and I didn’t do two tours to be afraid of some Johnny-come-lately zombie wannabes. You don’t have enough support and if they can’t friend-or-foe me, then I’m an asset you’ll want to squeeze for all it’s worth.”

Hawk looked away, considered, nodded. She took the gun from him.

The woman took a deep breath and prepared to go out. “The name’s Shana and my dad always said that beauty was only skin deep.” Shana broke out in the biggest smile Hawk had seen, as she loaded a charge into the chamber. “But lethal? It's to the bone.”

She stepped out of cover and went to work.


End file.
